


the lucid moors at moonrise

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: AAverse, Angst, Mirrorverse, Nightmares, No Gore, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pregnancy, family themes, pisces surp is just havin a Time, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:03:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22900660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: At what point did the waters stop being comforting? At what point do they begin again to soothe, and at what point does it stop being real? Lies and dreams are much the same thing, and if they're different, that's only the incoherence of sleep talking.
Relationships: Pisces Lugonis/Pisces Surplice
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	the lucid moors at moonrise

**Author's Note:**

> I had my six-hour layover and five-hour flight, and Tsuko was like "hey you should write some Lugonis/Iccy angst, you never do that" and I was like "...Oh I know EXACTLY what to do here" so here is Pisces Surp just havin' a bad time with their PTSD and hibernation and having to come to terms with Lugonis' death and everything they just lost in the fifteen years between him dying and Alba calling them. Which in surplice time is like ten seconds, but because hibernation, also basically forever.  
> I will stop beating up all my favourite characters when I'm _dead_. Also, Aconita is an OC Tsuko and I made! She's Alba's little sister, specifically in that one Mirrorverse mod where he gets to be a child of the Ostara Ride. I love her.

There was darkness. And then there was light, and darkness again. His laughter in the sunlight, his hair aflame against the rays of warmth that they rather thought were more in tune with his smile. The way he would take their gauntlet and kiss the knuckles, tell them he would be their knight if only they wore the crown. (It was, of course, woven from golden roses, but they had long since abandoned their throne, and it was before he knew that they once had one.)

His scream, shrill and heartbroken and terrified, screaming their name as he blacked out. As they were powerless to save him.

The way he broke out into a run when he saw them, his nose broken and not a single care in the world for any of that, no, he had caught sight of them and that meant he was going to catch them too, let them throw him into the air and laugh together. The feeling of his lips against their starlight air. The way he loved them.

Further back, further into the dark, the depths, the descent into a madness that they weren’t sure if they ever surfaced from. They had come to fear it, in the way few things could make them truly fear. They did not feel time. They did not feel time.

Thirty years, each agonizing second, they had never felt so _mortal_ and the twenty years with the one they would hold as best of them all could never have countered it.

They sat up with a start, gasping, unaware for a moment of anything but the dark, chilly waters and the screaming of a broken woman. The pain crept through them, at its most intense in their stomach and pulsing through the rest of their body.

“Iccy, baby, what’s wrong?” came the voice beside them, and they turned, and there he was. Their rose of flame. Lugonis sat up beside the, his hands already around them, those eyes the colour of the deep, untethered sea ever so bright, blinking away sleep.

They all but threw themself into his chest, stifling a wail of terror. It had felt so real… They would burn the world to cinders, if it meant they never had to see another lake again. They had been trapped, and yet… His arms slipped around their back and held them, rubbing soothing circles into the back of their breastplate – no, that was their shoulder blades, wasn’t it? Locks of rumpled hair fell around their face, and not all of it was red-orange, not all of it was long and wavy.

Their sobbing subsided after a few moments, and they didn’t pull away from him. They did look up, though, up into those eyes they thought were the colour they wanted to paint the sky, up at that scarred face so full of concern. They had been the one to scar that face, originally. Less a murderer’s brand, more of a king’s crown, but they still tried.

“Nightmares?” he asked softly, and one of his hands drifted to the back of one hip, pulling them into his lap, into his embrace where they weren’t the one doing the protecting, and for once, they were glad of it. They nodded silently, looking away, hating the very idea of admitting that they needed the comfort and protection. They were supposed to be the strong one.

“I’m here, okay? I’m here,” he murmured, and they answered by kissing him, soft and desperate and needing to know that he really was. He responded, his kisses like waves, like the tide rolling in against the shoreline. In and out and in again. Their hands found his hair and kept him there against them, until he tilted his head away and gently set them down. They looked up at him, and he smiled, brushing curly, teal locks out of their face.

Around them was their shared bedroom in the Cathedral, blurry at the edges but sharp at the parts they remembered best. The bonsai tree they had shaped together in the motif of two fish in the shape of a heart. The ribbons and hairbrushes on the nightstand, the clothes scattered across the room, most of which belonged to Lugonis, and his habit of wearing clothes until they gave in and reminded him that he looked best without any.

The world around them seemed to begin to awaken, and they heard laughter from the room beside them, and a door creaking open, and the sound of excited, but light footsteps.

“Toast for Mama, toast for Mama,” crowed a soft, high voice. They weren’t sure for a moment who the voice belonged to, but smiled all the same.

“Best pretend you’re still asleep,” Lugonis whispered, his smile soft and brilliant. He settled them back down on the bed, tucking them in underneath tangled sheets. They smiled back at him and closed their eyes, trusting the two small Cosmoses that grew stronger each and every day.

They barely had time to settle down into bed before the door opened, slow and hesitant and still creaking, like two children who very much did not want to awaken them by accident before their gift of likely-burnt toast and jam could be bestowed.

“There’s my favourite little minnows,” Lugonis remarked, his voice soft and delighted. They knew exactly who he was talking to, down to the placement of Albafica’s birthmarks and Aconita’s every freckle. A small hand tapped their shoulder, and they shifted slightly, allowing a falsely-pitiful noise to escape their lips, like they didn’t want to awaken, like they weren’t already awake.

“Mama, we’ve got breakfast,” Aconita sang, tapping their shoulder again. They opened their eyes, sitting up slowly and exaggerating a stretch before opening their eyes. Beside them was their daughter, eight years old, her hair the indigo colour of sunset and her skin dark like their own, freckles spattering across her face and smile as brilliant as the dawn. Beside her was their son, fourteen years to call his own, his hair the colour of the morning’s sky and his skin as pale as his father’s, a silver serving tray with surprisingly unburnt toast and jam upon it. They’d even remembered a glass of juice.

“Are those for me?” they asked innocently, placing their hand over their heart, eyes wide. Aconita nodded, her entire body bouncing with the movement, her fins stick-straight with her excitement. She hadn’t even bothered to brush out her hair or pin it out of her face. Albafica stepped closer, pressing a kiss to his mother’s cheek before offering them the platter. They took it and set it down on their lap, avoiding placing it atop their swollen stomach – their so-far youngest child, who wasn’t due for another two months but kicked plenty enough to make up for not being able to demand their own position in the world quite yet. They took a bite of toast, Lugonis’ hand on their back, and found it surprisingly well-cooked.

They looked up and trilled their delight out of their gills, fins perked with their satisfaction. Aconita clapped, trilling her own excitement in return. Albafica stepped around her and settled on the corner of the bed, rubbing the shoulder blade that Lugonis hadn’t already claimed. They leaned into his touch ever so slightly, and he returned the affection with a loose hug around their shoulders, resting his cheek beside theirs. Aconita leaned in to join the hug, and then Lugonis had his arms around what he could reach of all three of them, and they leaned into him and trilled. Albafica let go first, standing up again with his arms now folded.

“Mama, please eat it all,” he said, almost an order if it weren’t still polite. “You need to keep your strength up and I would be sad if you didn’t.” They laughed, taking another bite of jam and toast to emphasize their willingness to listen. They swallowed the mixture of blueberry and lemon jam and toast, setting their wrist to rest on their stomach.

“It is excellent, and I would be remiss to not eat something as well-cooked as this,” they answered, the height of formality in their tone. Then they winked. “I also would be remiss to credit you with cooking it. I have seen you lamenting over an open flame, my Albafica. Might I assume there is a half-stack of burnt toast hiding in the kitchen?”

“Behind the icebox,” Aconita sang, her arms still tightly around their chest. “He burnt four slices before the smell woke me up and I thought he was burning to death. One day his pride won’t let him wake me up to cook first and then we’ll all have roast fish for dinner.”

“Aco!” he yelped, a faint blue blush crossing his cheeks. He unfolded his arms, as if debating pushing her, torn between using his weight to his advantage and accidentally roughhousing against his very-much-expecting mother.

She stuck her tongue out at him and blew a firm raspberry. He glowered at her, fins flat back, and Lugonis started to laugh. “I expect it cleaned up by lunchtime. You have fed your mother breakfast, possibly scorched the kitchen, and neither of you are dressed. I recall the both of you have activities planned today. Do either of you plan on actually making it to them?”

Albafica puffed his chest out, drawing his punctured pride around him like a shroud. “Minos will have zero complaints if I’m late because I wanted to make sure Mama had breakfast. It’s not like I was doing anything fun without him.”

Aconita grinned, pressing a somewhat-wet kiss to her mother’s cheek before scampering to her feet. “I want to brush your hair before you go, Aco,” they called after her, not bothering to check if she heard them. She always did, even if she didn’t always listen. Albafica huffed, kissed his mother’s cheek, and followed his sister back out.

They waited until they knew he was out of earshot, and started laughing. Lugonis’ laughter followed, and his fingertips brushed their wrist, encouraging them silently to eat a bit more. They smiled, pausing their mirth to finish the slice of toast before leaning back into him. “They are absolutely going to change their tune when the baby’s born,” they remarked, resting the back of their head against his collarbone. “Remember when Aco was born?”

Lugonis’ laughter intensified with the shared memory. Albafica, then eight and not aware what their mother’s swollen stomach and almost-constant healer visits had meant, had taken one look at his baby sister, looked at his parents, and asked almost deadpan, if entirely serious about it, if they could take her back to the baby shop and get one that didn’t scream. Lugonis had told him that no, they couldn’t, but he could always try his hand at holding her and seeing if she stopped. He changed his tune again when Aconita was old enough to scream less and babble at him more, and once she’d started talking and learned his name, he had decided that she was his now, actually, thank you very much.

Aconita herself was going to be in for quite a surprise. They shook their head a little with the entertaining idea, and went about finishing their toast.

Lugonis helped them get dressed and get out of bed, opting not to bother attempting to brush their hair out and simply tying it out of their face with a half-bun. Aconita came by again fully dressed, with her favourite seashell hairpin in one hand and her brush in the other, but still refusing to settle down enough for her mother to brush her hair out properly. They couldn’t make out any of the details on the hairpin unless they focused on it, and if they did, it was all they could see.

She’d run off again by the time Lugonis had actually had a chance to get dressed, which they were quietly glad for, as they reached over and grabbed his backside, making him jump ever so slightly.

“Iccy,” he scolded, and they knew he didn’t really mean it. He brushed his hair out with a few swipes of the comb, tying it quickly back into its usual side ponytail and ignoring how messy it was. They shifted on the bed closer to him, slipping their arms around his abdomen and brushing their fingertips across the fine dusting of hair around his navel. He blushed and kissed them, lingering on the moment before slipping one arm under their tail and the other behind their shoulder blades. They settled up against him, relaxing, allowing him to carry them out of their room.

Pros of being heavily pregnant: everyone fusses over you and tells you that you’re glowing (even though you are the deity of vengeful death, and thus generally glow on principle on account of having more Cosmos than everyone else), your infuriatingly sexy husband does an awful lot of carrying you around, your already-born children bring you breakfast, and there will soon be a baby to welcome into your life. Cons of being heavily pregnant: a lot of sleepless nights and nightmares when you do actually sleep, an awful lot of being very picky about foods you will eat and your stomach will let you keep down, and generally your entire body is in a dull pain almost constantly.

Lugonis carried them down the hall to the kitchen, where Albafica had thoughtfully moved their wheelchair near the door. He set them down into their chair, and they relaxed back into it, curling their tail on the metal bar they had set below the seat. Their son had also cleaned up, and the only thing left of his idea of cooking was a faint smell of something burnt, which was thoughtfully countered by burning incense left out on the dining table.

Albafica himself walked out from the hallway, focused entirely on adjusting his leather vambraces and nearly bumping into the table. He looked up and smiled. “Finished breakfast?”

They smiled in return, reaching down to wheel themselves up to the table and generally removing themself from his path to the front door. He paused to give his father a hug, in the middle of which came a sharp knock upon the door.

“That would be his young Highness,” Lugonis remarked. “Best not keep him waiting.” Albafica grinned in response and let him go, walking over to the door and lifting his sword from its stand, slipping it into its sheath at his belt and opening the door. On the other side was what most people would say was a teenage girl, with a short skirt halfway down her thighs and with snow-white hair almost as long, tied up tight with a multitude of rainbow ribbons, her cat’s feet wrapped in leather to protect the soft parts from anything sharp as she walked. She wore golden laurels, and she looked quite innocent, if not for the gleam in her cosmos that indicated something else entirely.

“Come now,” Minos said imperiously, his voice not at all matching his appearance. If he had truly been reincarnated as a girl this turn around, he wasn’t telling. “There are turtles to bully and pies to eat. You’re _late_ , Alba-my-love.”

They rolled their eyes behind him, wondering how embarrassed he was going to be about it when Lugonis inevitably brought that up at dinner and quizzed him on every social relationship he had. Albafica flicked a fin in return, lackadaisical. “I was ensuring my mother had breakfast. This is important, as you very well know.”

Minos tipped his head to one side. “That’s your dad’s job.”

“I help my dad do stuff, unlike _some_ people I know,” Albafica retorted. Icthỳes rolled their eyes, preferring to tune out the conversation as the two teenagers finally stopped arguing and headed out to whatever adventures they were going to have. They blinked, and Lugonis was holding a mug of coffee, offering it to them.

They took it, and smiled back at him, and for a moment, his smile looked off, like it wasn’t quite right. They blinked and he was perfect again. Pregnancy, in all likelihood.

After Aconita had also left, off to go bother the newest Spectre child who had been brought in, they resolved to head out into the open and remind the others that they were, in fact, still alive and healthy. Lugonis pushed them to the entryway and out the door. He preferred that they kept to the wheelchair and their mermaid’s tail while they were pregnant, rather than shifting into having legs and adding the extra strain onto themself.

Outside of their home in the Pisces residence, the Cathedral was bustling with activity. Leo Ilias was out with one of his two spouses, watching their young children – Regulus and Pefko, both incredibly energetic boys, of five and three respectively – run across the main square of the Cathedral. It had resized itself to accommodate its residents. When Lugonis had been the only one, the main square was no larger than a hallway of twelve doors. With Leo Ilias, Aries Gateguard, Libra Itia, Virgo Lakshmi, and Gemini Mavros in the mix, it had swelled to the size of a respectable market square, large enough to host all the Gold Spectres and whatever family members they opted to bring into the Underworld with them.

Aries Gateguard didn’t appear to be home, but Libra Itia and Qirine were, laughing merrily over some scroll that looked positively ancient. Qirine was in their godly form as well, all swirled markings and weapons at their hips and twin tails snaking around their ankles, Itia wearing his chest-compression shirt and loose trousers. On Itia’s shoulders was Virgo Lakshmi’s young child, barely a toddler of two and sometimes almost invisible, phasing in and out of reality like the child of the Mabon Ride that they were.

A Cosmos flared at the entrance, and they looked up from the scene in front of them, blinking. The Spectres around them did the same, bowing and curtsying before returning their attentions to whatever had previously held them.

“Hello, Mother,” they said automatically, eyeing Queen Persephone’s split skirt and her crown of snowdrops and winter storms. She dipped her chin in response.

“Hello, Icthỳes,” she answered, smiling. “Good to see you out and about, especially with those twins of yours keeping you up all hours of the night.” She knelt to scoop Pefko off the floor, resting him easily against her hip.

Lugonis stepped forward, his hand slipping from the handle of their wheelchair to their shoulder. “Twins, Majesty?”

Persephone only smiled something mysterious, a twinkle in her eyes that they recognized well from Aconita’s birth. “You heard me, young man. I should hope you can manage, but I won’t deny, it’ll be nice to have some more young ones brightening us all up in time for Beltane.”

Their stomach fluttered just a little, and their twins – twins! – responded with a kick. Lugonis squeezed their shoulder. “Only one more pregnancy to go, then, unless Queen Hera pulls a fast one on us,” they answered, finding their own joy bubbling out of them like the warmest of sea currents. “I am certain Albafica and Aconita will be as overjoyed as I about this.” They fluttered their fins, settling them into a more comfortable position.

Persephone reached up to brush her hair out of her face, her hands phasing through her crown entirely. Pefko, in the blink of an eye, had disappeared from her grasp. “There was one more thing I need to do here before I return to Heinstein, and I must be lucky today. Lugonis, if you wouldn’t mind helping me?”

He knelt beside their wheelchair onto one knee, his hand drifting to theirs. “Anything, Majesty. What did you need?”

She stepped to one side, her faceless, armoured guard stepping forward from behind her, where they had been unseen. They had seen that armour before, designed it over and over a million times in sketchbooks and parchment, never quite getting it right. Now, they looked almost divine. Attached to their elbow was a dark-haired man with eyes wild as the moors at moonrise, dressed in a surplice that shimmered with godhood: Ophion, then.

“Zaphiri!” Lugonis was on his feet and bolting over quick as a tide’s turning, arms flung wide for his best friend, once lost, finally found and come home to where he might yet heal. Zaphiri released the guard’s arm as the two men collided, and stumbled back, falling onto, and then into the floor, disappearing beneath the marble tiles.

“Lugonis?” They rose from their wheelchair, tail shifting into legs clad by living water made a robe, stepping out of the mobility aid and striding forward, past their mother, to where the two had disappeared.

The scent of roses, heavy with dew, heavy with blood, slapped them almost awake. They staggered, stumbling back with the sudden, sharp agony. Like every rivet being plucked out of them with no concern for the threading. Agony bolting through their skin and scales over and over, until they were falling back.

Their spine and fins met soft, bladed thistles and brambles. The sky above them was gray and swirling with the storm, Minos’ lightning streaking across the sky, his eight-year-old scream splitting the heavens with the agony. He hadn’t been in his own body when they ripped the Meikai apart, no, he had fallen into Mag Mell and-

The rosevines below them crumbled, unable to support their weight. They fell further, slapping against velvet as solid as orihalcon. They sunk into the water as it lapped at their scales, and they couldn’t feel their fins or their legs. The lack of salt stung at their eyes. They attempted to swing their arms, hoping to swim, hoping to break the water’s surface, no, it wasn’t working, their gills weren’t opening and they were losing oxygen.

The water’s surface collapsed over their face and they fell, screaming, the air draining from their throat and pulling them farther down.

_Lugonis, where are you, I need you, we are going to drown, Lugonis, please—_

“C͟a҉n̡ ̛we ҉wak̛e̴ ̶t̶h͞em up?”

“No.”

“But t̡hęy̡’̡r̶e͟ sc̡r̛ea͘mi͢n͞g,͡ a̢n̡d-̵ “

“Nothing but the next Pisces Saint will-“

The _clang_ of steel on steel.

Breathe. He’s gone. Pull the cosmos back into metal. Breathe. He’s gone where he’ll never be found. Keep breathing. There isn’t any water here. It’s over. Breathe. Breathe.

_Lugonis…_


End file.
